‘These extraordinary times create extraordinary challenges for theatre makers’

The stories that we tell matter. Over the past year, there has been much said about the collective narrative that we tell through spaces, places, and monuments, who gets remembered and importantly the stories that are left out.

Bristol has been at the centre of national conversations about how we come to terms with our traumatic historical narrative and how we build a new one that connects not divides.

Asking questions about the stories we tell and who tells them, and whose voices are heard, is more important than ever.

As a parent of a four-year-old of mixed heritage, much-needed conversations have emerged around the stories we tell our children, the images these children see and how they place themselves within these narratives.

As a child growing up in the 1980s, my mother recalls the four- or five-year-old me asking: “Mummy, can you be a princess if you have brown eyes and brown hair?”

For my parents, this presented a very real and pressing challenge, involving ordering books with multicultural representation by special catalogue and trips to specialist bookshops in London as well as the brilliant Hummingbird Bookshop in St Paul’s.

Our book collection had a very special place in my heart, and it has been a joy to start to pass on many of these hard-won books to my own daughter.

With this in mind, I have been watching with interest the audits that many schools and early years settings made of their bookshelves over the last year, some thinking for the first time, and some more deeply about how the stories they tell their children really reflect their worlds (and the worlds they may one day create).

Travelling Light is a storytelling company based in Barton Hill, so what does all this mean for us?

Theatre can reflect our communities, capture imaginations, and open up possibilities. So as theatre makers, we have the potential to play just as important a role in representation as the books I read my child.

More than ever, we have a duty to consider the stories we tell, why we tell them, and who shapes and creates these narratives.

Part of narrative lies in the performers we cast in our work. For me, it was heartening that our recent shows deliberately depicted multiracial siblings (in my opinion positive representation of mixed heritage households is not as common as it should be).

Diverse casting has become more common in theatre, and while it matters, alone this is not enough.

The faces who tell our stories may be representative but what about the artists who create narratives through scripts or directors who hold the power to shape stories within the rehearsal room?

Within our community there are multiple narratives, how do these become a key part of the stories that we create, especially when we can’t all come together in a room?

Audiences are also key to the stories we tell. We need to constantly ask ourselves who is present and hearing these narratives.

That is why throughout Travelling Light’s history touring, and not only to theatre venues but also to schools and community settings, has always been central to our work.

Within the very difficult climate of lockdowns and social distancing, the audiences we reach have never mattered more and we need to find more creative ways of reaching them.

Placing artistic content online does not go far enough with digital deprivation creating barriers for so many children.

This is a pressing question for many theatre makers and at Travelling Light this has led us to experiment in form, keeping storytelling at the heart of our practice.

When we create our plays, sometimes our artistic director and creative team go through the process of taking a story from the pages of a book to the stage.

This Christmas, we were not able to create a traditional production due to Covid-19, and instead we made a story book based on one of our plays to distribute to children across Bristol.

It was fascinating to watch our artistic director and designer taking the elements of an early years production and placing it scene by scene within the pages of a picture book.

These pictures allowed multiple stories to come to life within the homes of children, sparking their imaginations and enabling them to place themselves within the narrative.

Working with children’s centres, nurseries and foodbanks, we distributed 1,700 free picture books within our local Barton Hill community and to many families who would not access a Travelling Light show within the walls of a venue.

These extraordinary times create extraordinary challenges for theatre makers and I am excited about how these new approaches might develop, increasing both the depth and reach of our practice and enabling children to keep experiencing stories.

We must keep challenging ourselves, asking difficult questions and listening to the answers.

The question about the ‘relevance’ of the arts is perhaps not the right one; we need to ask about how to remain necessary to the needs of children and communities now.

The stories that we tell matter more than ever but the questions remain. Whose stories? How do we tell them? And who is listening?

Dienka Hines – photo: Travelling Light Theatre Company

Dienka Hines is executive director at Travelling Light Theatre Company. Main photo of Travelling Light’s summer school: Camilla Adams

Read more: ‘Creativity is key to a healthy childhood’